How can the perpetuation of the human race take a backseat, and become an annoyance and a distraction from that all-important "career" is something that I can never understand

Any economist would agree that the value that a couple adds to Planet Earth by conceiving and giving birth to a kid is likely many times the value they add at the workplace in the course of their lives

Going to attempt to explain how Bitcoin is like Gold, and why their prices have acted like they have lately to follow up on a debate with @MustStopMurad@hasufl and a few others...

For starters, it is indisputable that ICO Mania / Bitcoin prices peaked at the same time as Global Markets marking the end of the Blow Off Top of 2017 after a decade of the most extreme monetary policy in history.

In this way, Bitcoin prices (like the rest of “Crypto”) acted very much like a speculative Asset Class over the last couple years culminating in a peak like a Risk Asset when Global Markets peaked.

In the Gurumurthy vs Economist (or liberal economists) debate it is really hard to pick sides because so much of liberal economics--at least in terms of banal policy advice--is just wrong. Yet, those same shibboleths keep getting repeated.

Here is the rub: tight fiscal policy, tight credit policy cannot coexist with a current account deficit. The liberal "solution" would be to either accept lower growth or "more reforms." Unless you have independence from elections, it is hard to sell slower growth. As an aside,

1. Hannan is right to point out serious constitutional/democratic deficiencies with a CU. Essentially, the U.K. would be bound by tariffs (and trade remedies such as anti-dumping duty or responses to Trump tariffs) in which it - and Parliament - has no say.

1. Unfortunately, @NickBoles is still prattling on about a "Norway then Canada" #Brexit. He has no idea how the system works. The transfer to EEA is not a simple copy and paste job. There's the Efta accession for starters then EEA will require configuration. (Thread)...

2. EEA does not cover fisheries or agriculture and though this is a selling point of the EEA that does not mean we can simply not have formal agreements on these sectors. We would also need an EEA customs protocol which would take a while just to negotiate.

3. Engineering the EEA for our own ends would require substantial reworking of parts of it so we are looking at a staggered negotiation and implementation of it which very well could take the better part of five years - which business would then have to adapt to. and implement.